Toxic chemicals are still harmful to the environment, but not enough to pay for their proper disposal.
That’s essentially what the governor and state Senate are saying with their recent budget proposal to once again gut a Department of Ecology grant program that helps keep everything from oven cleaner to battery acid out of Puget Sound and our fresh water aquifers.
The Legislature may be under enormous pressure to cough up education funding to satisfy the McCleary Decision, but taking a page from the White House and slashing essential environmental programs for temporary budget relief is not the answer.
Lawmakers need to reconsider this proposal, and if they can’t, then the job falls to Island County to protect Whidbey Island.
It doesn’t matter who pays the bill, motor oil, paint and other poisons that kill simply have no place in the Salish Sea, backyards or our wells.
Ecology’s Coordinated Prevention Grants program is aimed at hazardous waste collection. Here in Island County, it funds one full-time position, portions of three others and provides the money for the little area at the county dump where you drop off all the toxic products like acids, aerosols, oxidizers, paints, automotive petroleum products, etc., basically all the stuff that would kill you if it ever made it into your ice tea.
Keeping it away from drinking water and Puget Sound are why the program exists in the first place, to provide a place for disposal to avoid the ole hole-in-the-backyard solution. Last year alone the county collected nearly 300,000 pounds of household hazardous waste, 195,000 pounds of which was motor oil alone.
The state, however, has drastically reduced funding for the program, cutting it from $28 million four years ago to $15 million in 2015. Lawmakers are proposing to reduce it again, this time by one-third to $10 million.
Education is important. Public safety is important. But so is the environment and our drinking water.
If state lawmakers can’t do the right thing, then the county commissioners need to step up to the plate and provide the funding needed to keep this vital service alive.
